


Five Times Daryl Dixon Said No Homo, and One Time He Didn't

by gay_writes_with_mac



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Do not take me seriously, M/M, Tara being a little shit, background rositara, crackhead best friends Daryl and Tara, five times fic, i literally never write dudes why did i think this was a good idea, no beta we die like men, this is fifty percent crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24621769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: What it says on the can. Please do not take me at all seriously.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Jesus, Tara Chambler & Daryl Dixon, Tara Chambler/Rosita Espinosa
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	Five Times Daryl Dixon Said No Homo, and One Time He Didn't

“It’s not gay if you keep your socks on.”

Daryl stares at her. Blinks once. Then twice. “What…?”

“If you keep your socks on. It’s not gay.” Tara shrugs, completely nonchalant. Behind her, Daryl sees Rosita sneaking up, surprising her with a kiss and a smack on the ass before she keeps going on her way. Tara shrugs again, allowing herself a grin. “Took my socks off. Now here I am. You just gotta say ‘no homo’, my friend.”

“‘No homo,’” Daryl repeats, not at all sure if she’s kidding or not. He’s not sure which he’d prefer. “You want me...to say no homo. And that’ll make it not gay?”

“That’s how it works,” Tara says cheerfully, spinning her large knife around like a top. “And the socks. The socks’ll get you every time.”

Then she strides off, whistling out-of-tune to herself, leaving a dumbfounded Daryl in her wake.

“I asked her for the _weather_ …”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daryl is going to murder that girl.

_Go on a stakeout, Tara said. It’ll be fun, Tara said._

In reality, it’s freezing, frost is forming in Daryl’s eyebrows as fast as it is in the grass, and he can’t feel his fingers despite the fleecy gloves Carol gifted him. It’s not quite snowing yet, but that’s only by the grace of whatever god’s running this shitshow, because it’s plenty cold enough. 

Jesus mumbles another incoherent string of words under his breath, almost certainly laced with expletives, the freezing air clouding in front of his face. “Fuck it. We’re not catching whoever’s been swiping from the granary tonight.”

“‘Cause the thief’s smart enough to not be outside in this,” Daryl grunts, his crossbow digging into his shoulder where it’s been sitting unused all night. “Gonna kill Tara in the morning if I ain’t frozen to the grass by then.”

“You can _get in line,_ ” Jesus mumbles, rubbing his fingers together for warmth. Even through eyes heavy with weariness, Daryl can see that they’re bright red, not shielded at all from the elements by his elegant yet not-at-all-warm fingerless gloves.

What he wants to do is express concern. Worry. Chastise him lightly for wearing such impractical winter gear the way Tara chides Rosita lovingly whenever she gets hurt training. But what comes out instead is a rough grunt of “You stupid?” To soften the blow, he awkwardly follows up with “Wearing gloves like that out in this? You wanna lose every damn finger to frostbite?”

Jesus just smiles wryly, well-accustomed to Dary’s particular way of phrasing things. “These are all I have. Carol doesn’t like all of us enough to handknit a new pair of wool gloves. Besides, I don’t think it’s cold enough for frostbite just yet.”

Daryl just huffs, folding his arms. He deliberately avoids eye contact with Jesus for a moment, but only a moment, because he can feel the other man’s gaze on him and its tug is impossible to resist. Finally, he huffs again, loud enough this time to rival the horses in their stables next door to the granary. He savors the soft wool for one more moment, then sheds both gloves and tosses them into Jesus’s lap, digging for a cigarette as an excuse to miss his reaction. “I’m gonna want those _back._ And no holes and shit, you hear?”

Jesus carefully tugs them on, flexing his frozen fingers experimentally. “Sir, yes, sir.”

“...no homo,” Daryl follows up, a bit belatedly as Tara’s completely-unasked-for-but-not-

unwelcome warning kicks him in the ass suddenly. Jesus turns to look at him a little oddly, but doesn’t ask questions, something for which Daryl is immensely thankful.

“...okay then. No homo.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daryl hisses as the knife slips straight from the rock he’s been sharpening it on. It’s not too deep, nothing needing stitches, but deep enough that Tara’ll laugh her ass off at him for a week, and also deep enough that Jesus is right there, breathing down his neck, fussing over one little gash.

“You should go to Enid,” he says for the millionth time, pressing a scrap of gauze down into the wound. “In case it gets infected, or it really does need stitches-”

“Don’t need stitches,” Daryl grunts, for some reason passively sitting like a bump on a damn log and letting Jesus treat him like a child anyway. “It’s _fine,_ ‘m tellin’ you-”

“And I’m telling you different,” Jesus huffs, without a trace of actual irritation. “Now, quit your bitching and let me help. You’ve got to learn to be more _careful_ -”

And then they’re making eye contact, _very serious_ eye contact, staring at each other, and Jesus has shockingly pretty eyes. They’re grey and green and blue all at once, not like any eye color he’s ever seen on a human before, and also his eyelashes are _very_ long, and dark too, and the wind is rustling his loose chestnut hair so that he bizarrely looks like a perfume model-

“No homo!” He blurts out suddenly, because his socks are starting to feel slippery, and he likes them where they are right now - firmly on his feet. 

Jesus actually flinches back, nodding slowly and eyeing Daryl like he’s some kind of disturbed person. “...sure. No homo...I guess…?”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, what?” Tara’s nearly bent over laughing, clinging to the whitewashed rail of the porch of the house she inherited when she started leading this place. Daryl still wakes up in a cold sweat some nights thinking about how _Tara’s_ leader. “You slipped on a banana peel and fell and landed on his dick? That what happened?”

What makes it even worse is that her assessment isn’t _entirely_ inaccurate.

Like, the banana peel part, that’s all Tara being a little shit. But Daryl definitely did not come back from a two-week escape into the woods with few changes of clothes and fewer baths expecting to drink four times too much shitty moonshine and wake up three hours later than he meant to in a passed-out, snoring Jesus’s bed.

But he _did._

And somehow Tara knew.

“I said no homo,” he mumbles, oddly defensive for some reason. “And I kept my damn socks on.”

Jesus had been absolutely _perplexed_ by that “no homo.” Like he’d been expecting Daryl to say “homo” or something. “Like he wasn’t expecting anything at all, maybe. But he’d gotten “no homo.” And he almost seemed sad about it.

Tara sighs, folding her arms. “Look, Dixon. The socks have jack shit to do with whether it’s gay or not. It’s...it’s a fucking _metaphor,_ asshole. Like...like, when you mean it, you take your damn socks off. When you’re ready. Bare feet aren’t gay, idiot, it’s the fucking _symbolism_ and shit.”

“You been smoking something?” Daryl mutters, but he thinks he kinda follows what she might be getting at.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tara is mercifully nowhere to be found the next time he sees Jesus, both of them fully clothed, although Daryl suspects she might be making herself scarce for a reason. She’s a traitor, that one. Leaving him to face his whatever-the-fuck-he-should-call-Jesus alone.

Jesus has the good grace not to act too strangely around him, speaking to him with total civility, which is weird because Daryl thought they’d almost spent enough time together to get past the need for civility. Of course, that was before what has been irreversibly burned into Daryl’s brain as the Banana Peel Incident, and the Banana Peel Incident obviously changes things.

He regrets it and he doesn’t at the same time. He regrets what it’s done with his... _relationship -_ he’ll go ahead and call it a relationship, not that Tara’s right - with Jesus, but at the same time…

That was the best night he’s had in a long, long time. Even with his memories blurred by the moonshine, he can’t remember another time he felt that good.

Even locked up in Barrington House, up to her nose in plans for an extension to Hilltop’s walls, Tara’s become an indelible and extremely annoying hand of God in his life, and the assignments she posted that morning have him and Jesus out together in the very farthest depths of the woods that they’ve explored.

Alone.

Until tomorrow morning.

With only one horse.

Well played, Chambler. Well played.

Jesus takes the front position at once, easily picking up the reins. Daryl’s never liked the damn creatures - man wasn’t made to ride about on beasts like that, and his bike is much less likely to be startled by a rustling bush and toss him headfirst over a cliff - but he doesn’t argue, just awkwardly scrambles up behind him, his arms instinctively wrapping around the other man’s waist.

And holy shit, how did he miss how fucking _strong_ Jesus is?

Because he is. Jesus is fucking shredded, nothing but lean muscle, and Daryl is about twenty percent jealous and eighty percent attracted to that slender, wiry strength.

He doesn’t even realize he’s biting his lip until a drop of metallic blood fills his mouth with the taste of iron and then he flushes bright red, automatically attempting to put some distance between himself and Jesus. But horses aren’t actually that big when you’re on their backs, and all he does is nearly fall and thus latch on even tighter, except now his chin is on Jesus’s shoulder and he’s got a mouthful of caramel brown hair and he’s also now grabbing his hips instead of hugging his waist.

“You all right back there?” Jesus asks softly, barely audible over the wind and the hoofbeats, a tinge of humor in his voice, and Daryl swats his shoulder, adjusting to a slightly less awkward position.

“I’m _fine,_ ” he mumbles, and it’s embarrassing enough that he sounds like a petulant child, but he’s not humiliated himself enough in front of Paul Rovia today, so he really goes for the kill shot and caps off his verbal suicide with a mumbled “no homo” before looking off very determinedly at a weirdly-shaped tree in the distance so that he doesn’t have to look at Jesus.

Jesus just sighs. He sounds disappointed.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The campfire they make is perhaps the most awkward moment between them yet. Not to worry, though, because Daryl is certain he’ll break that record pretty soon, just give him another five minutes. 

Jesus quietly turns over his speared piece of rabbit meat so the heat from the coals distributes evenly, staring soberly into the low flames of the fire. The dancing tongues of flame flicker over his face, creating waves of shadows that highlight his features, his eyes gleaming slightly with the reflection of the fire. 

He really is beautiful, Daryl decides. And even worse, he’s not mad that he’s decided that. 

This time he doesn’t say it out loud. It’s only him who hears the quiet remonstration, the reminder that whatever he does, he is not in love with Paul Rovia.

_No homo. No homo. No homo._

It was flimsy the first time and now it’s just pathetic.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They’re packing up camp in the morning after a long night of very deliberately sleeping on opposite ends of the campfire when Daryl says fuck it.

No, he literally says it. Out loud. For both of them to hear.

“Fuck it.”

“You’re cheerful this morning-” Jesus starts to remark dryly, but that’s as far as he gets before Daryl shuts him up by kissing him.

He breaks it off after a moment, just a few seconds, really, and immediately turns away to avoid the shellshocked expression on Jesus’s face. “Come on,” he grunts as gruffly as he can manage, grabbing his pack. “Need to get back before Tara sends a search party out for our asses.”

Jesus huffs a surprised snort of a laugh, then grabs his pack as well, and this time Daryl somehow ends up on the front of the fucking giant horse with the other man behind him, his arms wrapped firmly around Daryl’s waist and his breath warm on his ear despite the morning chill.

As phrases go, “fuck it” isn’t one of Daryl’s best, but it’s a damn sight better than “no homo.” He personally has no intentions of uttering it ever again.

  
  
  



End file.
